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Korean Drama Endings

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll probably never be completely satisfied with any Korean drama. Ever.

There have been many Korean dramas that I like or have found worthy of satisfaction, but my favorite parts of those dramas are never the endings. And the endings are never parts that I can remember anyway.

Last weekend, I finished watching the very popular Korean drama Secret Garden. I actually skimmed the last two episodes. The day after I finished the drama, I looked at the Secret Garden calendar that my sister and I collectively bought and thought, What was so good about this drama? Why did I even buy a calendar for it? This was the first drama that I, myself, bought any official merchandise for, and here I was wondering why in the world I bought this calendar that would be sitting on my desk for at least the next five months. Only after listening to Baek Jiyoung’s That Woman, probably my favorite song from the OST, did I realize that I did in fact, like this drama very much.

But what was it that made me not as interested in these last episodes compared to the previous ones?

While my seventh and eighth grade English/Language Arts teacher wasn’t exactly my favorite, I have to admit that I was able to figure this out thanks to her. All stories, and things with a storyline like TV shows and movies have a few points in common. Following her words, they start at the exposition, where characters and the setting is introduced. This is followed by the rising action where most of the events happen in order to build up to the climax. Once the climax is reached, there is the falling action, where some more events happen and then the resolution that ends it.

The thing is, the rising action constantly gets more and more suspenseful to build up to the climax, and once you’ve reached the climax, the story dwindles down to arrive at the resolution. The endings tie up the loose knots and by doing so, you have to slow down a bit and not allow there to be excessive conflict (it’s even worse when there is excessive conflict in the last episode(s)). By doing so, the storyline remains relatively smooth and slow and sometimes even boring. No matter how sweet or cute or happy, endings can be quite generic.

I never encountered this problem before when watching American TV shows because they’re practically endless. In addition, most of the ones I watched were sitcoms so when they did end, it wasn’t like a big finale that you had been waiting for since the start.

This will probably happen with all the dramas that I am falling in love with right now, and all the dramas that I will fall in love with in the future. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop watching Korean dramas and switch to American TV shows. Maybe I’ll get used to it one day, maybe I won’t.

Who knows, once Eunii goes to college, maybe I’ll pick dramas up and drop them whenever I want to. xD